day 3: adytum

Hanami doesn’t remember falling ill, but she must have a fever, because she’s freezing and her bones ache. The sunlight streaming through the waxed paper in the windows makes her eyes throb in her head, but it’s soothed somewhat by the sound of the river outside and the humming of Mama in the kitchen.

Maybe it’s lunchtime. Maybe Mama is making soup, because...Hanami is sick. Maybe that’s why she’s so cold and sore. She must have caught a chill after going swimming with Haruki. Akinaga always yells at them, says not to go swimming in the fall, the water is too cold and anyway there’s no telling what the Garlean soldiers have dumped in the water--but that’s usually where Mother shushes him, with a worried look at Mama. Mama is afraid of talking bad about the Garleans because they already hate her, because she was a favorite among Lord Kaien’s samurai--

day 2: silenced

Cannonfire echoes over the river as Doma Castle crumbles. Friendly fire at her back, bringing down the walls, and allies under her feet stripping away the foundations--it takes Styrnbryda back twenty years, and every crack of a gunshot makes her wonder if she’ll turn around to see her mother with a smoking barrel and Imperial red and black.

Today, though, the Garleans are falling at her feet, their mass-manufactured armor no match for her magic and ruthless familiarity with their tactics; ahead of her, Alaihna’s axe shines in the light of the firebombs as she cleaves their gunships in two. Her grimoire is steady in her hands as she traces her fingers over the patterns inked across the pages; her egi follows her command at a nudge of a thought, dashing forward to spray fire over the last struggling soldiers.

The cannons fire again, and Styrnbryda flinches.

Malvela, jogging past to keep up with Alaihna’s charge, stops for a moment, globe shining at her back. “Are you alright, Styrn?” she murmurs, brushing the hair from her own forehead, slick with sweat in the Yanxian heat.

Styrnbryda nods, offering a small smile down to Malvela. OK, she signs, a mindless flick of her fingers, and as loudly as she can manage, she rasps, “Bad memories.”

day 1: submurged

Kurenai’s bed in Shisui of the Violet Tides is massive, low to the ground and piled in soft silks and cool pillows enchanted with magicks from the Kojin. It’s large enough that she can curl up in the middle with her head tucked under Hisui’s chin and still feel like she’s swimming.

“Shiosai told me how you went to the surface,” Hisui says. She’s reclined on Kurenai’s pillows where she’s been since the palace healers ordered her to rest; Hisui had griped and moaned about how she’d slept enough until Kurenai crawled into bed with her and there they’ve been since, Hisui’s suikan wrinkling in Kurenai’s grip. “He said there were pirates. You must have been so brave.”